[greyman]

What is depressing is that Google likes that kind of content, when a lot of cheap articles are pumped in furiously. If they were after quality, they could de-rank Demand and that would make them out of business quickly. But they wouldn't do it, since advertising dollars are at stake.

But on the other side, it isn't that terribly depressing, since their site will occupy only one slot in the search results. So it is still a chance for others to come up with better content for such keywords. But as it seems, it is inevitable for online media producers to play the keyword game.

[jcl]

At the end of the day, though, people want quality. If a low-quality SEOed article appears higher in the search rankings than a high-quality article, it is a flaw in ranking algorithm -- a weakness that other search engines can exploit.

I think Google is smart enough to realize that search dominance is their most valuable asset... that the money from search dominance dwarfs the money from favoring crappy content that matches ad keywords. This is just another step in the struggle between Google and the search engine optimizers.

(The deal between Demand and YouTube is curious, though... If the "real world" worked like that, prime time television would be filled with shows about cars, beverages, and pills.)